Monday, 21 January 2019

The Ordinary Moments - A New Saturday Routine

It’s been a long time since I joined in the “The Ordinary Moments” but being in the here and now and appreciate the little things is truly important to harbouring a positive mindset and promotes wellbeing. Through last years struggles I’m determined to improve my mindset and capturing and reflecting on our ordinary moments will no doubt do just that. So apologies if this is a little too boring or personal, but this is something I would encourage everyone to do, be it in the form of your own blog posts or in a journal. Take a moment and remember just how wonderful the ordinary is.

For my ordinary moment this week I wanted to write about our new Saturday routine, it’s something that brings me so much joy despite the fact I was quite anxious about making this change. Since Darcie was three years old she has been following in my footsteps and attending dancing lessons in the exact dance school that I went to all those years ago. It’s a place that holds fond memories and she has been making her own memories too. She was taking exams starred in shows and was learning so much. Her love for the theatre was growing, she wanted to do more and of course, we wanted to support her passions as best we can. Our lives as full time working parents are pretty hectic and it was becoming really difficult to make the trip to her dance school on multiple times a week (which was due to increase) and it was starting to impact on our family life. Being able to sit and have dinner, do homework etc. We decided to look at alternative ideas to try and support her passions but without having to do lots of travelling on multiple days. This is where we discovered a Theatre school in Bury St Edmunds where she could have all her tuition for dance, singing and acting in one day, meaning that the weekday evenings would become freed up. So, after leaving her old dance school at the beginning of November, Darcie started her new school in January and is completely in love with it.

Seeing her come out of her first day beaming, followed by the most beautiful song from the new Mary Poppins film, me and Jamie had happy tears - we knew we had made the right decision. So we’re now establishing our new Saturday routine and so far its shaping up pretty nicely.

Because Darcie is at the Dance school for three hours, it gives us quite a nice amount of time to actually do something, instead of sat in a waiting room. We’ve been making the most of the amazing market which is held in Bury and picking up all our fruit and veg from there. It sounds completely ridiculous but I actually love buying it from there, it’s so much cheaper and better quality than the supermarket. Of course, coffee is always on the agenda and here Henry and I like to have a little bit of chill time - he reads a magazine (so cute, right?) and I read a book and then we go for a lovely little walk before going back to pick her up. It’s the perfect slow morning and I’m loving having a little bit of one on one time with Henry. What I also love is that there is quite a bit to do in Bury, I can take Henry to the cinema, take him to the swimming pool, mooch around the Abbey Gardens - there is just so much that I can get to do with just him and not feel completely guilty that Darcie is then missing out.

I don't know if it's just the novelty of it all but it feels like it's really shaping up our weekends in a much more positive way and the weeknights also feel a lot less stressful. I said that this year I would make sure that I address any challenges or stresses that impact our lives (instead of either burying my head in the sand or putting up with) and trying to get the balance just right was one of them.